


Lookout Blues

by ClockworkCourier



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Prohibition Era, Christmas Eve, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:48:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21939217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClockworkCourier/pseuds/ClockworkCourier
Summary: John and Tom Hartnell talk about the future while they wait on a new shipment.
Relationships: Thomas Hartnell/Lt John Irving
Comments: 10
Kudos: 34





	Lookout Blues

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MissAntlers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissAntlers/gifts).



> Completely and totally inspired by MissAntlers/flurgburgler's incredible 1920s/Prohibition Era AU!! I just combined my love for it with my love of the Hartnells and Hartving, mashed it with my Detroity upbringing, and threw it into the blender!
> 
> MERRY CHRISTMAS, MY GOOD DUDE <3

They’re down to their last cigarette, which is the clearest sign that money’s dried up for the week. Like a lazy relay race, John and Tom pass it back and forth, taking short, quick pulls from it so that the little tobacco ember is the only light shining on their side of the island. They’re working under the heavy shadow of a new moon, so even their clouds of breath and smoke are invisible. At some point, John hooks his elbow close to his mouth and heaves with a chest-deep cough.  
  
“Jesus,” he croaks. “How cheap is that shit?”  
  
Tom regards the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, trying to ignore the sound of his brother’s rattling breaths. “I dunno. Billy gave it to me as a Christmas present before we left.”  
  
“Did Billy scrape it out of the gutter or what?” Another cough. “Tell St. Nick you want a refund.”  
  
Tom huffs a laugh and lifts the cigarette to his mouth, letting it cling to his bottom lip for a moment as he scans the ink-black line of the Canadian coast ahead of them. He keeps an ear out for the distant low thrum of an automobile engine, but only hears the wind creaking through the pines around them, and the groans and cracks of river ice.  
  
When they were scabby-kneed kids up in Traverse City, Tom remembers watching the ice on Lake Michigan pile high on itself, giant shards like blue glass stacking higher and higher as the lake shoved against the shore. He remembers sliding out onto the shallows, carefully grabbing the smaller pieces to put in a wagon and take back to his mother. She’d bury it in sawdust in the cellar so it would stay frozen, letting them keep fresh food just a little longer come spring. John would be the daring-do, climbing up the stacks like an acrobat to grab the pieces from the top of the pile, pausing to gaze out at the endless expanse of the lake. Inevitably, he’d come crashing down in a pile of bloody wool and ice, grinning from ear to ear to reassure Tom he wasn’t hurt _too_ bad.  
  
Honestly, aside from location, not much has changed.  
  
“What are you gonna do when all this is over?” Tom asks before sniffing and handing the cigarette back to John.  
  
John’s silent for a moment. It’s so quiet that Tom can hear the soft crackle of burning tobacco as John draws in. Then, after breathing out and tapping off the ash on the bottom of his boot, he hums thoughtfully. “Didn’t really think of this kinda stuff as being _over_. It’s been, what, four years?”  
  
“Five in March.”  
  
“Yeah. I just… I don’t wanna go back _there_ , ya know?”  
  
 _There_ meaning the factory. The acrid smoke that Tom could smell on John when he got home in the watery daylight hours, sprawling out on their shared bed while he struggled to breathe. The pink-gold glow in the night sky from the raw, white-hot metal rolled out hour after hour, so bright that it tricked the morning birds into thinking it was daytime. The place that nearly took his brother away forever, lost in giant, mechanical jaws that would press down on him like a mouse in a trap.  
  
Tom doesn’t say anything, but he does scoot over on the log until they’re shoulder to shoulder.  
  
“Maybe I’ll take the money and go,” John continues, handing the last little remnant of the cigarette back to Tom. “Up north again. Maybe to the U.P. or somethin’. They’re talkin’ about running power cables across the place—turning on some lights. I think I could do it.”  
  
“What about Ma?”  
  
“I’d take her with me. Up to, uh… Whatsit? Big place up there?”  
  
“Marquette?”  
  
“Yeah, Marquette. Get her settled down with a garden like the old days. Nice cottage facing the lake. Maybe get Betsy a couple years more of school.”  
  
Tom smiles, thinking about how well Betsy’s settled into their kind of life. It’s no way to raise their baby sister, keeping her as a lookout while they talk out deals between Hickey and Crozier. However, he doesn’t think Betsy would accept being a preened and polite schoolgirl. As she would say, the only reason she needs to know her alphabet and arithmetic is to understand what she sees in the accounting books. The fact she can drive a Model T _would_ be frightening if she wasn’t so damn good at it.  
  
“And Charlie?” Tom asks.  
  
“Maybe a job on a ship, or at the lumber camps? They make pretty good money.” Then, John nudges him with a too-bony elbow. “What about you? You thinkin’ U.P. or somethin’ else?”  
  
That question is far more loaded than it might seem. For as long as Tom can remember, it’s always been Them—the Hartnell _Brothers_ , capitalized proper and all. He only operated without John because he had to, and not for very long. The thought of going somewhere without him, without his entire _family_ is strange and daunting. He also knows John’s heard about the clearer air up north, the kind that would be easy on his aching lungs. On good conscience, he could never ask John to stay here in all the smoke and dust.  
  
But he also thinks about John Irving, and the deep-set want that comes with that whole package. Idle fantasies formed in the hours of waiting between shipments or on long lookout nights, imagining the two of them getting in a car and driving until they hit the ocean. Going somewhere new, maybe under new names, finding some little shack and setting up shop— _reputable_ shop, that is. Tom’s never wanted something so good so _badly_.  
  
“No clue,” he says, even though his heart aches for a better answer.  
  
The silence on John’s end is lead-weighted. Then, he lets out a dry, wheezing, “Uh- _huh._ ”  
  
Tom glares at the dark silhouette of his brother. “’Uh-huh’ what? I don’t know what I wanna do. I haven’t thought that far ahead!”  
  
“You of all people? Goddamn, Tommy—between you and Mary Ann, you’d get every issue with this country sorted out in two days if you got enough time to plan!”  
  
Tom flushes at the compliment (if it _is_ a compliment) and buries the bottom half of his face in his knitted scarf. “I’m bein’ honest,” he mumbles.  
  
“Like shit you are.” Another elbow nudge. “You got the next ten years mapped out in your head.”  
  
“No, I don’t.” He does. He crushes the remnant of the cigarette under his boot at the thought.  
  
“Can I guess?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“I’m gonna guess.” Of course he is. “You wanna, uh… You wanna go to Florida.”  
  
Damnit.  
  
John goes on. “Get a better car. Nothin’ too flashy so no one pays much attention to you, but enough to get you as far as you wanna go. An’ you wanna run some nice business that looks good on paper, even if you turn around and, I dunno, bet on racehorses or something.”  
  
“I don’t know shit about racehorses,” Tom counters.  
  
“You know what I mean,” John replies, swinging an arm around his brother’s shoulders and pulling him close enough that Tom can smell gunpowder and pine. “So Florida, decent car, legal job, and probably Irving.”  
  
Tom sits up straight so fast that he nearly knocks John off the log. “ _What?_ ” he exclaims, just as John bursts out laughing. Thank God it’s pitch black out here, or else Tom would be tomato-red and would give away _everything_ he’s thinking.  
  
“God, for bein’ so damn smart, you’re also so damn _stupid,_ Tommy,” John says, raising his hand enough to reach up under Tom’s hat and ruffle his hair like they’re little kids again.  
  
The motion knocks Tom’s hat into his lap, and he picks it up to use it to swat John’s arm. “Knock it off, moron!” he hisses.  
  
“I ain’t the moron in this situation. I mean, I never got much past the fourth grade, but I’m also not blind, Tom.”  
  
“The hell d’you mean?”  
  
John’s hand is resting on the crown of Tom’s head, and he pats him like a dog. “You’ve been makin’ eyes at Irving since he joined on.” When Tom starts up again, John pushes down on his head like he means to keep him still. “I ain’t judgin’! I’m of the mind that whatever makes my baby brother happy makes me happy, okay?”  
  
Tom’s face is ridiculously warm, even against the frigid wind coming off the river. Half a dozen possible responses pass through his head in a drunken march, falling by the wayside as he stumbles along with them. His brother’s _right_. Ever since the first big bash at the Kelley Club speakeasy on New Years’, Tom’s been of a single mind, trying to quash the feeling of goddamn _romance_ whenever John Irving would come into the room. The night after the Van Alstyne raid, when Irving was so drunk that he was practically sweating whiskey, whispering nonsense against Tom’s neck as he helped him into the back of the car out of the eyes of the cops, Tom’s known. No amount of pretty people passing through the speakeasies and back alley gin joints or clubs could turn his head the way Irving could, even if Irving wouldn’t turn _his_ head to look at Tom.  
  
And, of course, his brother’s known the entire time.  
  
“Jesus,” Tom whispers, reaching up to run a gloved hand over his face like he can wipe the blush away. “It ain’t like that.”  
  
“It ain’t like that because Irving doesn’t know, does he?”  
  
Honestly, there’s no use denying it. Only the sleeping birds and John Hartnell are going to know. “No, he doesn’t,” Tom finally admits.  
  
“You ever gonna tell him?”  
  
“Prob’ly not.”  
  
John laughs, which switches to a dry, hacking cough that he abruptly muffles with his elbow again. Once it settles, his voice is a rough, amused scratch of sound. “So he’s gonna keep on with the rat and his buddies and ignore the human ray of sunshine that’s practically shining on him, huh?”  
  
This time, softer, Tom says, “Ain’t like that,” while feeling _terribly_ self-conscious.  
  
“Hey.” John sidles up as close as he can, moving around so he can put Tom’s hat back on his head, pushing down the brim so it’s over Tom’s eyes. “Like I said, I’m not gonna judge you. You do what makes _you_ happy, yeah?”  
  
Tom pushes his hat back before nodding to himself. “Okay.”  
  
“Just ‘okay’?”  
  
“I mean, I can’t just go up to the guy and tell him I’m in love with him without thinkin’ I’m gonna end up in some ice fisherman’s hole with a cinderblock tied to my ankles.”  
  
He can almost _hear_ John roll his eyes. “He’s not gonna do that.”  
  
“No, maybe not, but—”  
  
“But the worst that can happen is he says no,” John counters. “The worst is, I take you to the U.P. like some big ol’ Hartnell family migration and we settle in and you do whatever you want. The beach ain’t _warm_ , but at least it’s there.”  
  
Tom smiles despite himself. He can imagine it, and as much as the thought of Irving reciprocating his feelings and living out his fantasies makes him feel warm, he feels just as good at the thought of going with his family, moving as one unit as they always have.  
  
“Yeah, it is,” he says.  
  
The two of them fall into a companionable silence after that, listening to the sounds of a Detroit River winter. In the distance, Tom thinks he hears a bittern bellow mournfully into the night, followed by—  
  
The unmistakable grunt of a Model T engine.  
  
“Right on time,” John says, just as a pair of headlights flicker quick as lightning in the distance. Tozer’s car grumbles as the chains on the tires rattle against the ice, bringing their new shipment in safe as can be.  
  
As it approaches, Tom suddenly feels John push something into his coat pocket. Curious, he reaches in and feels the unmistakable shape of a cigarette box. His eyebrows go up, and even in the darkness, he knows John can see him staring.  
  
“Merry Christmas,” is all John says, a smile audible in his voice.  
  
The Model T makes the last J-shaped turn toward the rendezvous point as Tom runs his thumb over a boxed edge of the carton. Once again, John’s given up something of his to make Tom happy, even something so small. And as he does, he knows he has to tell Irving how he feels.  
  
It’s what John would want.


End file.
